The Power of Believing in Yourself!

Some of you know I am a member of Toastmasters, working on my Communication and Leadership skills. I recently won the Area-level contest, having won in the club last month. I would now deliver the speech at the Division-level in April.

Here’s the Speech text. Since delivery matters as much as the content, if not more, think of all the hand gestures, facial expressions, body movements, vocal variety etc that go along as you read through.

Always believe in yourself! I have always believed in myself!

Toastmasters and Guests…

Are you ready to get inspired? Yes, Yes? Let me take you through my Toastmaster’s journey and how just a small belief turned around the fortunes of my current club in Warren!

I was working for Morgan Stanley in New York when I first heard about Toastmasters. Soon enough, I joined a very active club near Times Square in New York. They had about 50 members back then, each ready to grab any role they could get in any meeting.

Much to my delight, I got the opportunity to do my Ice Breaker pretty soon…in about a month. I can’t be proud of my speech though…I was all over the place. I spoke more about myself than even my parents know about me 😦 Anyhow, the feedback was overwhelming with a good number of suggestions to improve, and I did take them positively. But, before I could settle down in the club, I changed my job and joined Citigroup in Warren. The new location meant I couldn’t go to New York anymore. However, by then that club had motivated me so much that I couldn’t think of my life without Toastmasters!

I looked up on the Toastmasters website to find a club near warren and saw a club in Citigroup itself. A big relief, I was ecstatic! However, my happiness didn’t last long as there was no contact from the club mentioned on the website. Huh! I called up Toastmasters help desk and got the name of the founder of the club. After speaking to him, I came to know the club was practically dormant with only a couple of members around, including himself!

I felt dejected! I questioned myself if this was the right club to join. After all, why would you want to join a club with only 2 members around?

But didn’t I say ‘I believe in myself.’ I joined the club (yay) and vowed to give more than 100% to have the club up and running again. The club had had a pretty good run up until the recession of 2008/09, so there was nothing wrong fundamentally with the club.

I was soon assigned the Membership and Public Relations officer roles for the club. We started with an Open House and got a few members. In another few months late 2014, we did another one and got a few more people. In the next 1.5 years we grew up to 28 member-strong! A fantastic growth! And we have never looked back ever since! It’s a journey that the senior members of our club are proud of and we learned many leadership skills on the way – including patience, communication, motivation, and others.

However, one aspect that stands above all is that we came back from a very critical and crucial situation to being a very active club. Many of our members have started the Youth Leadership Programs (YPL). I’ve also conducted the sessions. We have competed at the Area and Division levels and won a few awards too! Moreover, we went on to achieve 2 Distinguished and one Select Distinguished awards in the last 3 years. Yes, we did it all! And we did nothing different than just believing in ourselves, facing the troubles head-on, and overcoming them.

You can do it too! You can do whatever you want to! You don’t have to go to Harvard or read expensive Books for that. It’s all with you already – Just Believe In Yourself!

Can you all repeat after me? I can do it; I can do it, We all can do it!

Wish me luck. If I win, I would then go to the District contest and then to the International Speech Contest (wishful thinking, eh!) 🙂